No Mod Shapes in the Age of Mesh ... Why??

[Coby Foden]

---

Masami Kuramoto wrote:

. . . .

And since the shape can't be your property, you can't call it "stealing" if others re-use it.

---

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php

7.1 You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights in Content you submit to the Service.

You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights you already hold under applicable law in Content you upload, publish, and submit to or through the Servers, Websites, and other areas of the Service, subject to the rights, licenses, and other terms of this Agreement, including any underlying rights of other users or Linden Lab in Content that you may use or modify.

[unquote]

Let's say somebody starts to make a flexy skirt.  Lot's of different prims are needed, many of them tweaked individually in a certain way.  The user did not create anything original to these prims, they just set the pre-existing numbers in the build editor in a certain way.  Does the user have any rights for these individual prims, or should they need to make them full perms so that other users could re-use them in any way they wanted?

As I read it, the TOS clearly states that the user indeed has intellectual property rights to these individual tweaked prims.  TOS does not speak only about uploaded content, it speaks also of the content you publish.  If the creator sells these prims individually then they are published.  The user can set the permissions (copy, mod, transfer as they wish).

Why a shape that has been modified in certain way, with the existing tool (i.e. shape editor) from the base mesh would be any different than prims are concerning the intellectual property rights?  For the modified shapes user can set the permissions as they wish.  Why did Linden Lab provide this feature also to shapes if they had thought that user had absolutely no rights to shapes?

 

[Bouttime Whybrow]

so if you make a shape by setting every slider to 1 and then i make a shape setting every slider to 1. i have "stolen" your shape?

if you set the ruth shape for sale no perm, everyone else using ruth is stealing from you?

 

i don't know why its hard for some people to understand the slider values (in all their combinations) are offered to all of us equally by LL and so making any setting no perms does not give you any IP rights. LL has the IP rights to the ruth shape as well as any variations done with the sliders because the variations were already made, they are already there, that is how it is possible to have sliders to begin with.

but whatever, if someone feels they "created" a shape instead of selecting one from the many choices already offered, go ahead.

but it doesn't make it so.

 

[Clarissa Lowell]

Again, a ridiculous analogy. If shape making were as simple as setting every slider the same, then yes, anyone could do it, everyone could do it equally well, there would be no effort put into it at all (it would take about five minutes, and no aesthetic ability or spatial ability or artistic ability at all) and it would be the same for every single person and so it would not need protecting.

It isn't a "puzzle being solved" because no one has put it together and left the pieces as is to reassemble. That may be the way a thief looks at it, because they are in fact doing just that with something someone else did spend time and effort making. They are just taking down what's already been done and putting it back together again with their name on it this time. But the shape they are stealing was not handed to the person who created it, by Linden Lab. It was not. Are you both being deliberately obtuse? I don't want to insult you but it seems so to me. (And when insults come into it, then people sound like purposeful trolls.)

Instead there are nearly an infinite number of possible combinations, as someone already pointed out and those of you arguing how all shapes are up for grabs, are conveniently ignoring. Not that most of your arguments make a bit of sense to me and from other people's patient but basic responses, I don't think the 'logic' makes sense to anyone else either. And that's even when you even address a point someone has actually said vs. some imaginary one, to begin with. Which I can't think of one example of, right now. Instead it's straw man arguments pulled from thin air.

Linden lab does protect the creations people make including shapes. It is very simple. Do you both not understand that? What part of it do you NOT understand.

The 'variations' in a shape were not already 'made' simply because - well why DO you think that? Obviously when a slider moves things change. Obviously all the people making these silly arguments have done to make a shape is tweak what others have made. Because if you begin with the Lab shape, there is a lot  you have to do to try to make something that stands out and is good. 

Not even sure what you mean by "created vs. selected one from the many choices already offered" - what choices already offered? A good shape maker starts from scratch. I'm just at a loss to understand what argument you guys are even trying to make. Because it's a slider tool, instead of a prim you can stretch, that makes it predetermined? 

I will have to remember that the next time I am trying to create a new shape, face and head shape, cheekbones, lips, eyes, nose, eye size and placement, and all the rest - all I had to do all along was snap my finger. It's all predetermined. Tell me where I can do that? 

 

 

[Clarissa Lowell]

By the way very interesting the word salad Masami is using. "can't object if others re use it." My shapes are made for personal use. I do not object to the shape being USED. That's the idea. What I object to is the shape being reSOLD, because I don't work for free so that others can profit.

Only a thief would think that is fair!

[Masami Kuramoto]

---

Coby Foden wrote:

You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights

you already hold under applicable law

---

The show stops right there.

Check out "threshold of originality" for derivative works in copyright law.

[Clarissa Lowell]

---

Masami Kuramoto wrote:

---

Coby Foden wrote:

You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights

you already hold under applicable law

---

The show stops right there.

Check out "threshold of originality" for derivative works in copyright law.

---

You keep talking about copyright. Some of us are talking about Linden Lab's TOS. You quote the TOS - only the part you want - and then talk about copyright so which is it. You seem to just twist things to justify what you want to do which seems to be taking other people's creations and putting your own name on it. 

I am not a copyright attorney and I do not pretend to be. But you have only taken part of what she quoted from TOS. Here is the whole thing. It takes a different meaning if you read what was written. I feel sure that Linden Lab's legal team worked on every word for a good reason so it will not do, to erase most of what they wrote!

"7.1 You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights in Content you submit to the Service.

You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights you already hold under applicable law in Content you upload, publish, and submit to or through the Servers, Websites, and other areas of the Service, subject to the rights, licenses, and other terms of this Agreement, including any underlying rights of other users or Linden Lab in Content that you may use or modify."

So yes if they already held IP rights they keep those IP rights. But then it goes on to say that those rights are also subject to what others have IP rights to. In other words if someone has IP rights you cannot take those from them.

When I finish a shape for example or someone finishes a house from the prims LL provides, they are submitting that through the SL service. 

It also says in the last part that just because you can use or modify an item, that does not take away the underlying rights from the person who made that content. 

You don't want to hear that, but that's what it says!

Now I also wanted to say something after I read that other mesh IP topic. The creator is allowed to apply the rights it wants the 'next person' to have. Modify, copy, or transfer. 

On my shapes which you keep saying are essentially not my property or I stole it from SL or some nonsense, because I had no choice except to use their starter mesh - On those shapes I do apply a permission system. I make it possible to modify them, that is so they can fit better on any skin the person has. I make it possible to copy those shapes so they can have a different version for different skins in a different folder. I TAKE AWAY the possibility for TRANSFER because I do not allow them to be resold or reused for the other person's shop.

You can ignore the permission system that the Lab put in place, to work around it in a non permitted way (like copy bot or copying other things), but then that makes you either a liar or a thief if you do that.

[Masami Kuramoto]

I said this before, but apparently it got lost in the noise:

Second Life's permissions system is not a manifestation of copyright. Linden Lab cannot grant IP rights or take away existing ones. Their TOS cannot override applicable law. Provision 7.1 basically says that you don't give up copyright on your stuff by uploading it to SL. If you already hold the copyright, you retain it on Linden Lab's grid. However, if you don't hold the copyright, the act of uploading won't establish one for you.

This means several things:

If I make an original mesh and give it away full-perm with a license attached to it, then the license may override the permissions. For example, if the license says "do not make copies", then you cannot legally make duplicates of the mesh although the permissions would enable you to do so.

On the other hand, if I rez a plywood cube, make some modifications to its shape, and then sell it no-transfer, everyone else would be allowed to make identical cubes and use them in any way they please, because the cube's shape is not my intellectual property. I may have created it first and it may have taken me a lot of time and effort, but it does not pass the threshold of originality that is required for copyright to apply.

Creators can use the permissions system to express an item's terms of use, but if the item is not eligible for copyright in the first place, then there is no legal way to enforce the permissions and keep people from copying or modifying the item.

[Coby Foden]

---

Masami Kuramoto wrote:

 

On the other hand, if I rez a plywood cube, make some modifications to its shape, and then sell it no-transfer, everyone else would be allowed to make identical cubes and use them in any way they please, because the cube's shape is not my intellectual property. I may have created it first and it may have taken me a lot of time and effort, but it does not pass the threshold of originality that is required for copyright to apply.

---

My head is starting to get confused with the rights.  It begins to seem to me as if the rights depend on what tools the stuff is made, and perhaps also on how complicated or easy the stuff made is. :smileyfrustrated:

Few (silly) questions:  :smileytongue:

 

If I make a cube, let's say in Blender, make some simple tiny modifications to its shape, import it to SL, sell it no-transfer.  What then:

 

•1.  Is everyone else allowed to make indentical simple Blender cubes, import them to SL, and use them in any way they please?

 

•2.  Is the simple cube's shape made in Blender somehow different from the cube's shape made inworld in respect to the rights?  Was the treshold of originality magically passed because the cube was not made with SL build tools?

 

•3.  Or is the cube's shape, I made in Blender with tiny modification, my intellectual property even though I did not invent the cube's shape?

 

[Bouttime Whybrow]

this is a question i've wondered about in regards to a lot of things like the written language. and in particular computer language.

lets take a comp language like php and forum software. since there are only so many ways to do things in that language, how can, say, simple machines forum ware not infringe on Vbulletin and vice verser since to have standard features like logins, quotes, timestamps, etc. all have to use the same operators/variables/calls.

two different forumwares have to have a lot of the same code since they are written in the same language.

how can i create a forum script in php without using the very same code vbull uses?

 

[Masami Kuramoto]

---

Coby Foden wrote:

If I make a cube, let's say in Blender, make some simple tiny modifications to its shape, import it to SL, sell it no-transfer.  What then:

 

•1.  Is everyone else allowed to make indentical simple Blender cubes, import them to SL, and use them in any way they please?

 

•2.  Is the simple cube's shape made in Blender somehow different from the cube's shape made inworld in respect to the rights?  Was the treshold of originality magically passed because the cube was not made with SL build tools?

 

•3.  Or is the cube's shape, I made in Blender with tiny modification, my intellectual property even though I did not invent the cube's shape?

---

1. Yes.

2. No.

3. No.

The tools only matter in so far as some of them provide more artistic freedom than others. The more freedom you have, the greater is your chance to pass the threshold of originality. It doesn't mean you do it automatically. Simple geometric primitives are not copyrightable, no matter where you make them. However, if you use dozens of them to build something complex the way people do in SL, the result is very likely to pass the threshold of originality. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

The problem with the appearance editor is that it offers no more freedom than the prim shape editor. Both are just a set of sliders/dials to enter numbers. If we agree that individual prim shapes are not copyrightable, why would avatar shapes be?

[Clarissa Lowell]

OK bottom line, WE can all say what we think the TOS says but I wish a Linden would chime in about now. Masami, you can claim that this or that is not eligible for copyright but I don't know why anyone should weigh your opinion above any other resident's opinion. What you have said just sounds like opinion to me.

I've made the best arguments I can for each point that has been brought up. It's to the point now where I am a bit bored with going in circles or not being heard as the case may be. It's pretty much all been said, I think, we all know how each other feels about things. Like I said I made my points as clearly and sometimes bluntly as I could, and my feeling about people stealing other creations. Justify it if you wish, if you COPY something and put your name on it, you didn't create it, you stole it.

Finding loopholes that allow you to not be prosecuted for it doesn't change that fact.

Unless a Linden chimes in though, I find it unlikely any of us will change our feeilng or thought on anything discussed here. So those of you stealing - all I got to say is I hope karma hits your dogma. Sayonara.

[Clarissa Lowell]

Each slider change impacts at least 3 other nearby components. The number of decisions, including deciding what not to do, is not just the sliders themselves. It's anticipating how each movement will change what is around it. And when it does, which thing or things to change in response. Made this shape today. Maybe took an hour, maybe two. The more you do the faster you get at sizing things up and predicting outcomes. Same skin and eyes. No photoshopping except cropped and brightened (equally on both images.) Testing the shape in world now which involves at least three days worth of separate log ins/time spent in world walking, sitting, viewing from different lengths away, angles, lighting, etc. Still have some fine tuning to do. But if someone took this result and just changed the mouth, or the bust, they skipped the hard parts. I made probably up to 50 decisions or nixed decisions while shaping the head alone, not even counting the features. People who make shapes would know. I encourage everyone to begin with Ruth and see.

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Masami Kuramoto wrote:

---

Ossian wrote:

For people like you, the word "easy" means "someone else does it."

---

I didn't say it's easy. I said it lacks originality, which is a key requirement for copyright.

The whole easy vs. hard argument is a distraction that you and Clarissa brought up. You think if something is just difficult and time-consuming enough, it automatically qualifies for copyright protection. You are wrong.

What you guys are doing in the appearance editor is basically solving a puzzle. You push sliders back and forth to find a configuration that doesn't suck from your point of view. That is a challenge, no doubt, but it is not artistic, because you are moving on rails and your choices are finite. Your artistic freedom in the appearance editor is zero. You will never escape Linden Lab's predefined morph targets, which are copyrighted just like the base mesh. No matter how long and hard you push the sliders around, the avatar's shape will never be your intellectual property.

And since the shape can't be your property, you can't call it "stealing" if others re-use it.

---

If I take a file that has your name on it as creator, and don't alter the shape dials - that's theft.

If I take the numbers you used, and put them on a shape with my name as creator - that's my original work, but only because everything about those numbers was already in my hands before I even saw the values you used in yours.

 

A like example and third to show where it stops:

First the like example: If you rez a bunch of prims, taper them all a certain way, and rthen use library textures on them, that's your work. If I take a copy of that, with your name as creator, and sell it - that's theft.

But if I go rez the same number of prims, taper them the same way, and use the same library textures on them - this new thing is my work.

BUT, if you use a texture you bought, or uploaded... and I then do everything you did, and then take your copy of that texture... that's theft.

But if I go buy that texture from the same legit place as you, then its my work that I've produced.

 

Thus the difference between imitation and theft.

 

- trademark - protects you from imitators, copyright protects you from theft. And trademarks are both not automatic, and require a lot more originality or uniqueness.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Coby Foden wrote:

As a side note about the amazonian women, very tall and often thin bee waisted, huge butted and huge breasted: They often have AOs which (for some reason) drive me absolutely crazy while looking at them. lol

/me thinks they might actually be men trying to appear as "super hot" women...

:smileytongue:

---

Go to elfwood.com (precursor to deviantart) and look at fantast art by teenage women - It often looks a -LOT- like many of those super tall and thin SL avatars. Right down to the current trend in weird lips.

- This is more a sign of wanting to be glamourous and having no grasp of anatomy.

The busty and hipsy ones though - that does look more like something men would come up with.

 

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Kelli May wrote:

To someone with a little patience, a mod shape is effectively copiable, and the copy is completely untraceable. Shape designers, like anyone else, don't want to give away their IP to anyone who wants to come along and rip off their designs. So it's very common for shapes to be sold no-mod.

---

Its a horrid product too. No-mod means even your face will be a clone of the woman right next to you.

Talk about not having any look of your own. Being ruthed would be a better curse.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Masami Kuramoto wrote:

Coming up next: copyright on RGB slider settings.

---

I -DARE- you to use the color settings of 'coca cola red'.

Well no I don't, because inciting unlawful action is itself unlawful...

- That said, this is a trademark, and not a copyright. And only applies to the Pantone Ink values, not any other means of obtaining a similar result. And they only got that because Pantone Inks are unique inks - each one being its own chemical concoction that you need to add to the press individually in addition to the CMYK inks used for the rest of the process.

(which goes to show an example of needing uniqueness - but that even a color can become property if obtained in a unique enough way).

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Coby Foden wrote:

I have found that with fair amount of studying the human body and its proportions it's fairly easy to make a well proportioned avatar shape.  What I do is that I put a photo of a humand figure on prim, stretch the prim so that the photo looks the right height to what I am aiming my avatar to be.

---

What I do is this:

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/getting-good-body-proportions-in-second-life/

But yes - it is VERY EASY to make a beautiful and well proportioned BODY-shape, if you just work with an anatomy guide of some kind.

More complex is the face. But to note what Ossian said about you, in reverse... I have never been able to buy a shape as good as the ones I can toss out in a few minutes of dial tweaking.

Maybe I need to change businesses in SL or something... if this is actually hard for some. I'd not been under the impression that this was talent on my part - but just something anyone could do.

 

[Clarissa Lowell]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

---

Masami Kuramoto wrote:

---

Ossian wrote:

For people like you, the word "easy" means "someone else does it."

---

I didn't say it's easy. I said it lacks originality, which is a key requirement for copyright.

The whole easy vs. hard argument is a distraction that you and Clarissa brought up. You think if something is just difficult and time-consuming enough, it automatically qualifies for copyright protection. You are wrong.

What you guys are doing in the appearance editor is basically solving a puzzle. You push sliders back and forth to find a configuration that doesn't suck from your point of view. That is a challenge, no doubt, but it is not artistic, because you are moving on rails and your choices are finite. Your artistic freedom in the appearance editor is zero. You will never escape Linden Lab's predefined morph targets, which are copyrighted just like the base mesh. No matter how long and hard you push the sliders around, the avatar's shape will never be your intellectual property.

And since the shape can't be your property, you can't call it "stealing" if others re-use it.

---

If I take a file that has your name on it as creator, and don't alter the shape dials - that's theft.

If I take the numbers you used, and put them on a shape with my name as creator - that's my original work, but only because everything about those numbers was already in my hands before I even saw the values you used in yours.

 

A like example and third to show where it stops:

First the like example: If you rez a bunch of prims, taper them all a certain way, and rthen use library textures on them, that's your work. If I take a copy of that, with your name as creator, and sell it - that's theft.

But if I go rez the same number of prims, taper them the same way, and use the same library textures on them - this new thing is my work.

BUT, if you use a texture you bought, or uploaded... and I then do everything you did, and then take your copy of that texture... that's theft.

But if I go buy that texture from the same legit place as you, then its my work that I've produced.

 

Thus the difference between imitation and theft.

 

- trademark - protects you from imitators, copyright protects you from theft. And trademarks are both not automatic, and require a lot more originality or uniqueness.

 

---

No, sorry. If you copy the numbers I made - which do require thought, decision, and aesthetic ability to choose in the unique combination I ended upon - and put your name on it, then you are a thief.

End of story.

So if you take a painting and erase a name and paint yours over the top, you're now the creator? Sorry, sounds like you've been smoking too much ganja.

Unless you copybot it, there is no way to take a shape EXCEPT to copy the numbers down and put your own name on them...but how is that ANY different one from the other? You can make twisted analogies all day long, but it's not what you created from your own thought and creativity - it's what you COPIED DOWN.

[Clarissa Lowell]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

---

Coby Foden wrote:

I have found that with fair amount of studying the human body and its proportions it's fairly easy to make a well proportioned avatar shape.  What I do is that I put a photo of a humand figure on prim, stretch the prim so that the photo looks the right height to what I am aiming my avatar to be.

---

What I do is this:

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/getting-good-body-proportions-in-second-life/

But yes - it is VERY EASY to make a beautiful and well proportioned BODY-shape, if you just work with an anatomy guide of some kind.

More complex is the face. But to note what Ossian said about you, in reverse... I have never been able to buy a shape as good as the ones I can toss out in a few minutes of dial tweaking.

Maybe I need to change businesses in SL or something... if this is actually hard for some. I'd not been under the impression that this was talent on my part - but just something anyone could do.

 

---

Well if you make shapes by just slapping your name on other people's work, (per your example above), then I truly hope you NEVER open a 'shop.'

[Kelli May]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

---

Kelli May wrote:

To someone with a little patience, a mod shape is effectively copiable, and the copy is completely untraceable. Shape designers, like anyone else, don't want to give away their IP to anyone who wants to come along and rip off their designs. So it's very common for shapes to be sold no-mod.

---

Its a horrid product too. No-mod means even your face will be a clone of the woman right next to you.

Talk about not having any look of your own. Being ruthed would be a better curse.

 

---

I didn't say it was right, clever or a good idea. The OP asked why people create no-mod shapes, and I gave a credible reason: protection of their product.

(I also, to some peoples' minds, misused the term 'intellectual property', which caused this thread to spiral off-topic in such a way that I haven't commented in a while.)

[Dana Hickman]

---

Clarissa Lowell wrote:

No, sorry. If you copy the numbers I made - which do require thought, decision, and aesthetic ability to choose in the unique combination I ended upon - and put your name on it, then you are a thief.

End of story.

---

 

This is true.

Even through intentional legit imitation, the odds of arriving at exactly the same values on more than say 50% or so of all *commonly adjusted* slider values is so astronomical that to find such is pretty much a guarantee of thievery. Someone who does that is no different than those inworld who write down all the object parameters of mod prims, one after another, until they end up with a perfect copy of someone elses construction that shows them as the new creator. RE-creations are not creations at all, they are intentional copies and a willful attempt at bypassing owner name or object permissions, and they still count as theft. IMO Mod item RE-creators are only 'manual' copybotters in a sense, but worthy of less respect than real copybotters because they demonstrate the amount of deceitful effort a thief will put into calling someone elses work their own.

[Clarissa Lowell]

---

Dana Hickman wrote:

---

Clarissa Lowell wrote:

No, sorry. If you copy the numbers I made - which do require thought, decision, and aesthetic ability to choose in the unique combination I ended upon - and put your name on it, then you are a thief.

End of story.

---

 

This is true.

Even through intentional legit imitation, the odds of arriving at

exactly the same values

on more than say 50% or so of all *commonly adjusted* slider values is so astronomical that to find such is pretty much a guarantee of thievery. Someone who does that is no different than those inworld who write down all the object parameters of mod prims, one after another, until they end up with a perfect copy of someone elses construction that shows them as the new creator. RE-creations are not creations at all, they are intentional copies and a willful attempt at bypassing owner name or object permissions, and they still count as theft. IMO Mod item RE-creators are only 'manual' copybotters in a sense, but worthy of less respect than real copybotters because they demonstrate the amount of deceitful effort a thief will put into calling someone elses work their own.

---

QFT! Thank you. So well said.

Kelli: I hear ya. But, to me, intellectual property means also the creative idea, and design. That comes from inside someone's head. Some are using the fact that some things are created in world using a common tool to claim it then means all creations are alike. That there is an exploit that makes it easier, doesn't change who actually designed/created it. (ETA I am not saying you said any different. I'm just saying what the word intellectual in intellectual property, means to me.)

(Quick ETA again Lol - I remember hearing that even a photo taken in world using the SL camera gadget can be copyrighted, because where to place the camera and which lighting selection to use are creative/intellectual decisions, even if no further photoshopping is done. If that is so, I can't see why anyone would think the same is untrue of the shape making tool provided us.)

[JoJo Aurelia]

Every shape I own is modifable. Where you shopping?

[Pussycat Catnap]

---

Clarissa Lowell wrote:

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

---

Coby Foden wrote:

I have found that with fair amount of studying the human body and its proportions it's fairly easy to make a well proportioned avatar shape.  What I do is that I put a photo of a humand figure on prim, stretch the prim so that the photo looks the right height to what I am aiming my avatar to be.

---

What I do is this:

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/getting-good-body-proportions-in-second-life/

But yes - it is VERY EASY to make a beautiful and well proportioned BODY-shape, if you just work with an anatomy guide of some kind.

Maybe I need to change businesses in SL or something... if this is actually hard for some. I'd not been under the impression that this was talent on my part - but just something anyone could do.

 

---

Well if you make shapes by just slapping your name on other people's work, (per your example above), then I truly hope you NEVER open a 'shop.'

---

Bit judgemental there eh? Presuming what I do - oddly wrong as well given how much info I supplied you, you skipped right past everything I wrote to make your judgement about my conduct based on your attitude towards my stance - a completely unfounded unevidence conclusion.

Didn't say I do that.

But its just slider values - so there would be nothing wrong with someone who did copy them.

I've made my shapes starting with a new shape and working proportions. You can see how I do it in my blog that I linked, that you even quoted... and ignored your own quote work...

 

 

Considering the limits of what can be done with those sliders to make a proportionate shape, and the limits imposed to fit that into mesh outfits, and the limits imposed by the flaws in sliders throughout... there is quite a -LOT- of repeated number use on the grid.

The IP here though, is the SL body itself. Not the morph target settings. I'll take my cue on that from having seen this all play out over the years in the Poser/Daz3D community as well.

 

 

[Masami Kuramoto]

---

Clarissa Lowell wrote:

---

Here's an experiment you can try with your SL friends:

Put that shape you designed next to an IMVU avatar, a WoW avatar, a There.com avatar, a Sims Online avatar, a SW:TOR avatar, a DAZ "Victoria" model, a MakeHuman model and whatever else you can find. Then ask your friends this question:

"Which of these avatars is from Second Life?"

Even if you remove all the attachments and textures and make them all stand in the same T-pose, people will always recognize the Second Life avatar, no matter how you tweak the appearance sliders.

And this, dear Clarissa, is all the evidence a court would need to conclude that shapes are derivative works of insufficient originality and not copyrightable.

But hey, don't take my word for it. Sue and see for yourself.